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bayer withdrawing imidacioprid from labeled use in almonds

I am not a computer expert so I cant paste the article from my email to here as I cant find copy link. However according to Kim Flottum and bee
Culture bayer is voluntary removing almonds from the legal and labeled use of this neonictinoid insectide. i'm sure you can google and find the article
or some computer person can put link here. Earlier it has been reveled that EPA scientist were very hesitant to approve this insecticide without more
test and thought test needed to be developed for this new type of insecticide. however it got approved and in all probability because some of the
epa head were former employees of monsanto. refer to Dan Rathers report on these insecticides which aired a couple of weeks ago. All very
interesting and what I have been saying all along.....by the way BUD you are very quiet! What did you think of dan rathers report? I liked his
comment that putting a chemical company employee in charge of epa regulating pesticides was like hiring a fox to build a fox proof hen house! what I have been saying for two years....where are u BUD????

Re: bayer withdrawing imidacioprid from labeled use in almonds

Thats not too surprising in view of this:

http://juliascott.net/?p=176
"In its 2007 studies, Bayer applied standard doses of imidacloprid to test trees, including apple, lime and dogwood. Its scientists found imidacloprid in nectar at concentrations of up to 4,000 parts per billion, a dose high enough to kill several bees at once. (Honeybees can withstand a dose of up to 185 ppb, the standard amount it would take to kill 50 percent of a test population.) What caught the attention of California agricultural officials was that the test trees contained the same amount of deadly imidacloprid as the citrus and almond groves regularly sprayed by farmers, and pollinated by bees. (California’s almond industry has increased its use of imidacloprid by a factor of 300 in the past five years.) Agricultural officials were also surprised to learn that the imidacloprid can persist in the leaves and blossoms of a plant for more than a year."
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Re: bayer withdrawing imidacioprid from labeled use in almonds

The damage sometimes done to bees by the almond growers is 'the elephant in the living room' that no one ever wants to talk about. For good reason, i suppose, since many of us would have hung it up long ago if we had to live on selling honey.

But I sure hate the talk i hear from some about lowering prices. Thats just nuts ,IMHO.

Re: bayer withdrawing imidacioprid from labeled use in almonds

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"The Beekeepers in the USA are ahead of Australian Beekeepers at extracting better prices for pollination services and also at dealing with the adverse affects of NEONICS, I asked Tom Haefeli of Colorado, if he could talk about his experiences as a Beekeeper living with the rapid rise of NeonicotinoidS in his Beekeeping areas. ......
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Re: bayer withdrawing imidacioprid from labeled use in almonds

Last year we had two different handlers of our bees in the same general area and saw the same results with both groups of bees: Pallets seemed to either have really good hives on them (2 full boxes of bees and 10+ frames of brood) or else the pallet was poor to mediocre. The poorer hives did not lack for feed just had spotty brood patterns but were all laying like crazy as soon as they got to Texas. We hand picked hives that were all at least 7 combs of bees when they went in. The puzzling thing to me has always been with all the testing that has been done why there is not a clear link between bees that are either dead or not growing as they should and the results of testing of pollen and honey in those hives. Lets not forget that most of these crashes happen in the late fall and winter long before these hives are working any Almonds. Despite the fact that neonics have long been suspected the best conclusions that researchers seem to have come to is that it is most likely only one of many factors responsible. My guess is that the main two proven factors in bee losses arent changing much and those are #1 mites and mite borne viruses and #2 hives coming off a season of poor flows and the resulting poor nutrition and lack of young healthy bees(with the exceptions of those extremely diligent beekeepers that make up for this with supplements). If the 2011 Almond pollination season and the NASS hive numbers were any indication there was an uptick in hive health right after one of the better nationwide honey crops in recent years, that may or may not have been a coincidence. In any case I think Bayers decision has to be good news for our industry as long as we dont see an increase in foliar spraying as a result.

"People will generally accept facts as truth only if the facts agree with what they already believe."- Andy Rooney

Re: bayer withdrawing imidacioprid from labeled use in almonds

Jim

One thing I have noticed is bees arent living as long as they did in the period before about 2000. You never see the big bee beards as big as we
did then and I think this has had a direct effect on our honey crop> I dont have the numbers but I think it was Mary Ann Frazier that gave a
presentation that if you could get bees to live just a couple of days longer in a hive there was a huge differance in the honey crop. A hive that has
60,000 bees makes 4 times as much honey as 30,000. I think there is a link yet to proven that eventually there will be a link from neonicotinoids
insecticides to decreased honey crops. I agree with you about colony health and survival and its revelance to honey crops/mites. a GOOD NECTAR
FLOW CURES ALOT OF ILLS!! However last year after a good flow all summer and fall some of my colonies looked great when we went to Florida first of December. Some had dwindled from making a box of fall honey in Oct to 2 frames or dead outs. There was a direct link between where these
colonies were and their health. the ones in the woods or non agricultural type areas looked great. The ones that were in more row crop/corn/city
were fair to poor to dead outs. Its my opinion that these insecticides weaken the immune systems of the bees and allow virsus carried by mites or
other health issues to become a much larger problem than they would have been. since queens quit laying and you have less to no brood hatching it is my belief that the fast die off of bees having shorter life spans is the major contributor to our fall losses along with virus hastening the process.
Take away these insecticides and I think our colony health and loss would be much differant.